I was waiting for this thread to start! I mean the potential class of 2016 already has one.

So things are going pretty well for me in Tennessee. I didn't really have as much time to settle into Knoxville as I hoped because furnishing my apartment turned out to be a bigger task than I anticipated. But we've been in class for a week and a half, and so far it has not been bad at all. For me it's been revisiting a lot of material from undergrad. Is physio a huge combo of cell bio, gen chem (with some physical chemistry), and gen bio for everyone else? I haven't started studying too much yet (I'm not a very uptight, type A person), but I know that I'll have to start being more diligent about that. UTK is cool because we have a physical diagnosis class that lets us start seeing live animals beginning the first year. The first three labs are cattle and this week I got to draw blood from the jugular and the tail vein. So that is a nice break from the classes. I'm excited for the clubs to start!

That's how anatomy lab made me feel. They basically said, "Well, you should all have 'Dissection of the Dog'... uhm, we recommend being done with the thoracic limb by next week. Any questions?"

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No kidding. It should be a good time.

I have been dedicating some time to every subject each day, except for histology today, because it would have been a waste of time for what we talked about.

I don't like taking notes on the computer, and I find printing notes a waste of paper because I like to make my own study guides anyway, so I just go through any side-notes I make in my spiral notebook fragments (leftover from classes in undergrad... so an investment I made years ago lol) with the powerpoints/pdfs/whatever and OneNote pulled up. I feel like I've retained a lot more than usual, but we'll see when tests roll around.

As for physiology being a big mix of things, that's basically what it is so I haven't been too surprised, other than I remember a lot more about neurophys than I thought I did (probably because my undergrad physiology professor was at teaching and I had to spend a lot of time on my own to really understand wtf was going on).

School hasn't started for us yet (next week), but ... I took a look at my (23-page) radiology syllabus and ... is it too late to back out?

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23 pages?! sheesh! the syllibi have for my classes are the most poorly written and sloppily put together papers I have ever seen. amused to hear that not everyone's professors are so laid back about guidelines

23 pages?! sheesh! the syllibi have for my classes are the most poorly written and sloppily put together papers I have ever seen. amused to hear that not everyone's professors are so laid back about guidelines

are you joking?? thats insane!!! wow! maybe SGU keeps things short and sweet because they print everything for us. i.e. at the beginning of the term or periodically though out, we get printed note packets for each class including the syllabus. I already have a full 2 inch binder with all of my papers thus far and it doesnt include most of nutrition we will get later, anything from research, and only 3 weeks of physio and anatomy. i'm betting on more radiology papers too.

I have been dedicating some time to every subject each day, except for histology today, because it would have been a waste of time for what we talked about.

I don't like taking notes on the computer, and I find printing notes a waste of paper because I like to make my own study guides anyway, so I just go through any side-notes I make in my spiral notebook fragments (leftover from classes in undergrad... so an investment I made years ago lol) with the powerpoints/pdfs/whatever and OneNote pulled up. I feel like I've retained a lot more than usual, but we'll see when tests roll around.

As for physiology being a big mix of things, that's basically what it is so I haven't been too surprised, other than I remember a lot more about neurophys than I thought I did (probably because my undergrad physiology professor was at teaching and I had to spend a lot of time on my own to really understand wtf was going on).

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I passed out for histology today. Which was a joke. I could tell that from my sleep.

I've been taking notes on the powerpoint slides (the note view) and then go back through all of them and make a study guide every night after class. I like this method so far. Everyone around me is printing notes, which I don't think I'll have the cash for. I can condense a single lecture into one page in word... so why not?

I passed out for histology today. Which was a joke. I could tell that from my sleep.

I've been taking notes on the powerpoint slides (the note view) and then go back through all of them and make a study guide every night after class. I like this method so far. Everyone around me is printing notes, which I don't think I'll have the cash for. I can condense a single lecture into one page in word... so why not?

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Haha

Yeah, there's no way am I willing to pay for more printing (or buy my own ink) after my quota is used.

I guess I should say I'm partially just too lazy to bring my computer to campus to take notes on it, but that combined with not liking to take notes initially on the computer is enough for me to just leave it at home. I don't mind taking notes on the computer after I understand it better and can pick out what I know from what I don't know, hence why my study guides are on OneNote.

Anyway, it sounds like we have a similar way of doing it though, because mine aren't that long for a lecture either, unless I want to add figures or pictures.

I'm very tired in Philly, but have officially survived orientation. We finally saw the LA campus today, but it dumped buckets, so we stayed inside and played "team builders" (which actually didn't suck; the epic, 170 person rock-paper-scissors tornament was kinda awesome). The first two days were a lot of talk, but they fed us and it rained free corporate-sponsored merchandise. Not sure if I'm ready for Monday, but at least I have some idea of what my classmates look like.

I'm very tired in Philly, but have officially survived orientation. We finally saw the LA campus today, but it dumped buckets, so we stayed inside and played "team builders" (which actually didn't suck; the epic, 170 person rock-paper-scissors tornament was kinda awesome). The first two days were a lot of talk, but they fed us and it rained free corporate-sponsored merchandise. Not sure if I'm ready for Monday, but at least I have some idea of what my classmates look like.

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Yup, I agree. I'm getting more and more nervous about starting classes. I guess we'll see on Monday!!

So far, for OSUCVM c/o 2015, vet school has been one big party...but that could be because classes don't start for almost another month Those of us who are here already have been hanging out a lot, checking out different bars/area attractions, and just getting to know each other. It's been great! I'll let you all know how it's going when the real work begins!

I'm very tired in Philly, but have officially survived orientation. We finally saw the LA campus today, but it dumped buckets, so we stayed inside and played "team builders" (which actually didn't suck; the epic, 170 person rock-paper-scissors tornament was kinda awesome). The first two days were a lot of talk, but they fed us and it rained free corporate-sponsored merchandise. Not sure if I'm ready for Monday, but at least I have some idea of what my classmates look like.

Yup, I agree. I'm getting more and more nervous about starting classes. I guess we'll see on Monday!!

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Dont be nervous! It will be fun! And thanks for being so great during orientation (I was one of the student leaders in a yellow shirt), we had a great time with you guys. I think your class is a really great group of people.

I personally enjoyed my group's unsolvable human knot!
In other news, my landlord has informed us all of the extreme weather conditions approaching Philly due to Irene. I thought it was just going to be some rain but I guess it's more than that? yuck!

First week and a half of classes done... so far, its been exhausting, but incredibly rewarding! I feel like I've learned so much already... We have PBL here, and I've been enjoying the case based studies so far - we just started our second one yesterday.

Which orientation group were you in? In my group (9), the OL's decided that we'd worked out the 8 person knot much too quickly . . . so we combined with group 10 for a 16 person knot. Would've solved that sucker too if we'd had five more minutes . . .

Yeah, now I see what the second years were complaining about... but the accent really wasn't that bad. It was the actual words.

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Dr. C lecture? He's one of my favorite professors ever! He teaches 80% of LA anatomy lectures so figuring him out is a must! It sounds like he's barely teaching you guys at all in small animal from what a few of your class members said. A lot of our class would type every word out of his mouth furiously during class or tape it and make a manuscript later. Even if he's drawing on the board...type what he's saying, everything is important. Once it's all down on paper and you read it back it actually makes a lot of sense.

For the lab part everyone seems to have their own preference but no matter what KNOW YOUR BONES! Know every, single term, each foramen, what goes through each foramen, where each muscle attaches, how the attachment corresponds to the muscle function etc, etc. I liked to make my own typed up list with each term and everything 'special' about it and just drill it daily. We would go in every morning and run through the bone list including attachments, etc and it would be a breeze on practical day but those are points you do not want to lose. A lot of our class was taken by surprise by how many bone questions were on the first exam.

Dr. C lecture? He's one of my favorite professors ever! He teaches 80% of LA anatomy lectures so figuring him out is a must! It sounds like he's barely teaching you guys at all in small animal from what a few of your class members said. A lot of our class would type every word out of his mouth furiously during class or tape it and make a manuscript later. Even if he's drawing on the board...type what he's saying, everything is important. Once it's all down on paper and you read it back it actually makes a lot of sense.

For the lab part everyone seems to have their own preference but no matter what KNOW YOUR BONES! Know every, single term, each foramen, what goes through each foramen, where each muscle attaches, how the attachment corresponds to the muscle function etc, etc. I liked to make my own typed up list with each term and everything 'special' about it and just drill it daily. We would go in every morning and run through the bone list including attachments, etc and it would be a breeze on practical day but those are points you do not want to lose. A lot of our class was taken by surprise by how many bone questions were on the first exam.

Good luck guys! Hope the first week wasn't too stressful...

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Yeah, Dr. C it is! He seems super nice and really excited to be teaching us, it's just hard because I don't know the terminology to begin with, and then trying to decipher that with an accent on top is difficult. Once I went through his powerpoint after class though, it was easy to understand so I don't think it's going to be an issue, just a minor frustration in class itself. We only have him for 5 lectures total (including today's) though.

Thanks for the tip about bones! I am finally meeting with my big sib one on one tomorrow (we have met before, just haven't talked about school stuff yet) so I was going to ask some stuff about anatomy and the styles of questions, and you just answered one

Which orientation group were you in? In my group (9), the OL's decided that we'd worked out the 8 person knot much too quickly . . . so we combined with group 10 for a 16 person knot. Would've solved that sucker too if we'd had five more minutes . . .

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Group 8! Ours was an epic fail with just 8 people. You guys must be human knot geniuses!

AVC had their Blue Coat Ceremony tonight. Lovely event, fairly emotional. My presenter was my riding instructor, and she got very choked up as we were leaving. Classes Monday, including the dreaded anatomy lab.

Our schedule is a bit confusing because classes shuffle randomly. Done week one though! We already have studied and technically memorized the bones of the dog. Intimidating at first, but then got redundant. my fav class so far is husbandry, where we get assigned lab dogs to care for (and possibly adopt at the end of the year )
Our histo lab was a joke as well, we sat and looked at slides without any guide as to what to know or not, simply "sketch and label" instructions. Also pictures are made perfectly available online, and there are no assignments in the lab, only exams in the course. Meanwhile the lecture is a basic review of biochem so far.
I love our anatomy lab, but that is just my favorite course anyway. We got a "bone box" to carry around and study all the facets and horrible terminology of tuberosities, tubers, tubercles, trochleas, trocanters, and trocanteric fossas. haha
However, each week (orientation and class) has already been followed by a "bar crawl" to the 3 bars in town.

For the lab part everyone seems to have their own preference but no matter what KNOW YOUR BONES! Know every, single term, each foramen, what goes through each foramen, where each muscle attaches, how the attachment corresponds to the muscle function etc, etc.

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See, I was given the opposite advice, that the bones weren't super duper important! Y'all second years need to come to a consensus!

See, I was given the opposite advice, that the bones weren't super duper important! Y'all second years need to come to a consensus!

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They may have changed your syllabus but last year for both small and large animal anatomy bones/attachments were 60 pts out of the 120-150 pts of the practical. So if you didn't know your bones, you didn't pass. I guarantee it will still be that way in large but the small animal anatomy class has been changing a lot each year with the new directors (for the better in my opinion).

Classes start Monday, like Coquette said, but I've had a super awesome week off. Our orientation was yesterday and while I was exhausted afterwards I thought it was pretty fun. Roughleggedhawk and I were at the same table for our blue coat ceremony dinner last night too! I have a couple more things to take care of before Monday but nothing unmanageable. Hardest part was having to say goodbye to my boyfriend and parents this morning

They may have changed your syllabus but last year for both small and large animal anatomy bones/attachments were 60 pts out of the 120-150 pts of the practical. So if you didn't know your bones, you didn't pass. I guarantee it will still be that way in large but the small animal anatomy class has been changing a lot each year with the new directors (for the better in my opinion).

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Oh okay, gotcha. I'll keep that in mind. Actually I made a mistake, my friend's roommate who said the bone thing is a 3rd year, I'm pretty sure, so maybe things have been bouncing around a bit.

So far, NCSU has had 1 quiz in Bacteriology that threw most of us for a loop. All information pointed in one direction and the quiz came from another. Anatomy exam 1 covering the forelimb was last Wed and exam 2 covering the pelvic limb is the Wed after next. Following that, we have a Physiology exam covering genetics, excitable tissue, and muscles on Fri. Somewhere in between is a quiz in Histology. Very fast paced program and a large volume of information. Good times though.

Hardest part was having to say goodbye to my boyfriend and parents this morning

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That was a bummer. My parents left this morning.

So far, I've met SecondOpinion (very glad you decided to come to AVC instead of KSU!), HappyCats, New Foundland, Roughleggedhawk and that_redhead. That_redhead and I realized today that we actually met first thing Friday morning at breakfast and just didn't realize it.

Just realized I totally forgot to get my dissection kit on Friday. I was so worried about getting my loan papers signed that the dissection kit slipped my mind. UPEI bookstore is only open Monday-Friday, so I'll have to dash over at lunch time on Monday. Luckily, there shouldn't be much of a line-up because the undergrads still aren't on campus yet.

One week down, first anatomy quiz is this upcoming Thursday on the forelimb. I've got the bones, names of muscles, and most of the vasculature down. Working on origin, attachment, action, innervation right now. I felt overwhelmed on Thursday and part of Friday's anatomy lab, but less so now. We don't have a lecture portion of anatomy, it's basically just dive in and follow the instructions on the book. Not having guidance has been difficult for me to handle, because I get worried about cutting through something that I shouldn't...especially with the arteries and nerves. Otherwise, we have professional development, which addresses common issues that students in veterinary medicine deal with (proper human nutrition, sleep, stress) as well as issues we will deal with upon graduation (ethics), histology, and molecular biology. Histology is nothing earth shattering, and neither is molecular really. Radiology starts soon, pretty excited about that.

Not having guidance has been difficult for me to handle, because I get worried about cutting through something that I shouldn't...especially with the arteries and nerves. .

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A word of advice..... as far as I know, no school grades you on how "well" you do your dissection. Dissecting is a tool to learn, that is all. Way too many people get stressed out over this exact thing. At Penn anyway, you can study on anyone's specimen, so if you don't have a great dissection in one area, look at someone else's!

That is something I wish I knew first time around, I would have been much bolder in getting through the cutting part quicker, and exposing more of the specimen. Not recommending you do a complete hack job, but really nothing to be tentative about.

A word of advice..... as far as I know, no school grades you on how "well" you do your dissection. Dissecting is a tool to learn, that is all. Way too many people get stressed out over this exact thing. At Penn anyway, you can study on anyone's specimen, so if you don't have a great dissection in one area, look at someone else's!

That is something I wish I knew first time around, I would have been much bolder in getting through the cutting part quicker, and exposing more of the specimen. Not recommending you do a complete hack job, but really nothing to be tentative about.

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For real! At Mizzou they've really reminded us that we're not graded on dissection. We have a really tight dissection schedule that my group hasn't been able to meet, and so we've had to come in outside of class to clean our muscles up and catch up. I think we've got the hang of it now, but as long as you're sure you're cutting the right thing and can put it back together later to study it, just do it! Be aggressive! You'll have more time to study the actual anatomy.

A word of advice..... as far as I know, no school grades you on how "well" you do your dissection. Dissecting is a tool to learn, that is all. Way too many people get stressed out over this exact thing. At Penn anyway, you can study on anyone's specimen, so if you don't have a great dissection in one area, look at someone else's!

That is something I wish I knew first time around, I would have been much bolder in getting through the cutting part quicker, and exposing more of the specimen. Not recommending you do a complete hack job, but really nothing to be tentative about.

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You are correct, and we've been told it's not the end of the world and to look at other dogs anyway since there can be some anatomic variation, like with the external thoracic artery, but it's already hard enough to have 4 people looking at one dog, trying to get more than that is just a charlie foxtrot (learned that from "The Hot Zone").

You are correct, and we've been told it's not the end of the world and to look at other dogs anyway since there can be some anatomic variation, like with the external thoracic artery, but it's already hard enough to have 4 people looking at one dog, trying to get more than that is just a charlie foxtrot (learned that from "The Hot Zone").

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ummm. that would occur during the multitude of time you will spend in lab after hours.

We were graded on our dissection. It sucked. At first, it was peer graded. However, you couldn't just give your classmates good grades because you got checked by the TAs and if you missed something you got points off. Then our last dissection evaluation was done by the instructors. It wasn't a major part of our grade but it still made you nervous.